Fleeing or 'One Thief's Encounter with Anakin'
by Trinity Day
Summary: It doesn’t pay to mess with the Jedi.  A thief discovers just why it’s such a bad idea to steal an object being guarded by the Jedi, and why it’s an even worse idea to count on escaping when your pursuer is a former podracing champion.


**Fleeing   
(or "One Thief's Encounter with Anakin")**

**1/1**

**Disclaimer: I do not belong the characters or anything else you recognize in this fic. Star Wars is owned by George Lucas and Lucasfilms. I write fanfic purely for pleasure, although I'm not opposed to receiving feedback, that's all I receive for it.**

**Posted: Sunday, August 11, 2002**

**Summary: It doesn't pay to mess with the Jedi. A thief discovers just why it's such a bad idea to steal an object being guarded by the Jedi, and why it's an even worse idea to count on escaping when your pursuer is a former podracing champion.**

**Note: This started out as a challenge over at the Soul of the Jedi writing boards. However, it called for a 300 word limit, and I quickly realized the story I was telling was four time the length, so instead of trying to cut it down, I wrote this. **

**I apologize for the title. Really and truly I do. Unfortunately, I stared at this story for an hour, trying half a dozen different stupid titles and decided that this was the least offensive of them. Again, sorry. Sometimes (often times) I'm just not good at titling things.**

**Also, I have Support Services. That means that, if you want, you can put me on Author Alert and receive notice when I post stories or parts of stories, even if you haven't paid yourself.**

** Enjoy! And don't forget to review.**

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Sure, I knew the Jedi had come to protect the royal family. The entire planet knew. The media wasn't exactly good at keeping these things quiet and having two of the galaxy's protectors of peace and justice visit your planet was always a big deal. Yeah, I knew the Jedi were there, but I wasn't worried. I was after the royal _jewels_, after all, not the royal _family_. Besides, I'd sabotaged the guards' speeder bikes on my way in so that if someone did catch me stealing the jewels, a chase would be difficult.

As it turns out, stealing the jewels was easy. Getting away wasn't.

As soon as my hands rested on that gold and silver crown, carved skillfully with letters of this planet's ancient language that told the story of their first king's rise to power - priceless according to local folklorists and historians but, more importantly, also worth a fortune on the black market, if you knew whom to sell it to, which I did - I heard an eerie buzzing noise behind me. I turned. One of the Jedi was there, his light sword in his hand, blazing a dazzling blue.

"Stop!" he commanded.

He was easily two metres high and one of the fittest humans I had ever seen in all my travels. Although barely out of his teens, he seemed more experienced than a man twice his age - not to mention armed to the teeth and deadly, if you pardon my pun, serious about using his weapon.

I took one look at him and did the only logical thing: ran. Jamming the door behind me, I rushed down the outside staircase - a remnant of older days - as fast as I could without tripping. The Jedi, unable to open the door in any kind of conventional manner, tried burning through it with his light sword, but quickly gave up, much to my relief.

Said relief was short-lived. He crashed through the window instead.

Looking back, I suppose I should just be thankful that he didn't land on his feet and keep running. At the time, though, what he did stunned me. Diving headfirst through the window, when he did reach the ground he rolled in a somersault to break his fall. The splattering of glass from the window covered the ground, the furthest landing only a couple feet away from me. None of it, I noticed, had the good grace to maim, wound or otherwise mar his handsome features.

No, the storey fall didn't even faze him. While I stood and gaped, he rose, brushed himself off and checked for his light sword, which, _thankfully,_ he had lost. When he started after me, I gathered my wits and ran.

Again.

This time, though, not far. My own speeder bike was hidden in nearby bushes. The Jedi, predictably enough, went for the closest - and therefore sabotaged - bike. It started, but I didn't care; it wouldn't go far. The space between us was narrowing, which concerned me slightly. The Jedi was an expert driver, better than I could have expected.

I accelerated; so did he.

We came to the unguarded back gates, the entrance I had used earlier. With long practice, I was able to squeeze through the barely opened gates with only the slightest difficulty. Convinced the inexperienced Jedi would not be able to replicate my moves, I took a satisfied moment to watch him. It almost proved my undoing, as he drove through the gates easily, scarcely even bringing down his speed. For the first time, I started to feel an inkling of fear.

With not a great deal of distance between the two of us, certainly much less than I would have liked for security reasons, I raced over the field, I rejoining the city's traffic, which was light at this time of night. A drunken Rodian stumbled onto the road; the Jedi had to swerve to avoid him, granting me a slight reprieve. For a heartening moment it looked as if his bike would tip over, sending him sprawling and giving me a chance to escape for good, but almost impossibly he recovered his balance at the last instant, up-righting himself even though he could only have been at a thirty degree angle from the ground seconds earlier.

I narrowly avoided running into a parked hovercraft myself, watching the Jedi more than the road, and swore, deciding to keep my mind on driving.

Up ahead, the road turned left abruptly. Gritting my teeth, I leaned forward in anticipation; we were entering the older section of the city, characterized by its narrow and twisty lanes. I knew the area well - I would have no trouble losing my tail here.

He made the sudden, sharp turn flawlessly, anticipating the bends in the road better than even I, who knew the area, could. I would like to take a slight break in narration to point out this exact moment as the moment when I realized just how out of my depth I was. I was beginning to think nothing could save me now. We made two more such turns, and neither succeeded in allowing me to lose him.

Then came my big break - the Jedi's engine coughed and almost died.

Since the stretch of road we were on was straight for the next little bit, I took a chance and glanced backwards. My risk-taking was rewarded. I received my first reaction out of the Jedi other than stoic fanaticism: his eyes widened slightly. I smiled, quite pleased with myself and my handiwork.

My pursuer ripped open the metal panel that covered the wirings - all the while still driving and maintaining his speed, mind you. I stared at him in shock, forgetting all about the road in front of me. Sure, I knew of pilots who could fix their ships during a planetary flight, even a select few geniuses who could make fixes amidst a space battle, but had never even _heard_ of someone being so stupid as to try to fix a _speeder_ while riding it. Nevertheless, that was exactly what the Jedi was doing.

His engine sputtered a few times, and ought to have died completely, but he made some alterations with the machinery that counteracted my sabotage. I doubted they would stick - but then again I had doubted he would be able to make them in the first place - but as it turned out, they didn't need to.

Having had been looking behind me at the Jedi instead of at my course in front of me as I ought to have, I hadn't noticed that I had been picking up speed, nor that I was rapidly approaching another one of the old district's infamous sharp turns. Too late, I realized that I was going too fast to turn properly. Panicking, I slammed on the brakes, hoping to bring me speed down enough to make the turn.

Instead, I crashed.

The Jedi brought his bike to a perfect halt beside me and disembarked. Looking up into his unyielding face, I swallowed nervously.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

The End  
Sunday, August 11, 2002


End file.
